Poem fractal

Earth's Answer

by William Blake

28 November 1757 to 12 August 1827 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.”

Genius keeps the irregular path that efficiency would straighten · Proverbs of Hell, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

More remarks (86)

Drawing the boundary…

Read the poem Another poem

A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. A poem can be drawn the same way.

The poem’s constant is read from the build of its lines: their length, the size of the stanzas, and the share of vowels. Poems whose constants lie closer together are built more alike. The same poem always draws the same picture. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.

Primunia is the name for the source of that order: the pattern under the pattern, already there in a tree, a shell, and a verse.

Poems nearby in the constant

A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.

  1. Emily Dickinson · −0.2734 − 0.7735i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · −0.2774 − 0.7777i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Matsuo Bashō · −0.2753 − 0.7745i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  4. G. K. Chesterton · −0.2518 − 0.7723i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  5. Sara Teasdale · −0.2836 − 0.7957i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
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